


The Last Dance

by incandescens



Category: Elisabeth - Levay/Kunze, InCryptid - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Dancing, Gen, Halloween, Takarazuka - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 04:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incandescens/pseuds/incandescens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All I wanted was a partner for the tango.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Dance

Tonight I was dancing for love. I'd rather have been dancing for fame, but sometimes you just have to take what comes, whether it's partners, exhibition dances, or places to hide a knife.

My name is Verity Price. Yes, those Prices. I have a fulfilling and highly socially responsible career in working with cryptids. My whole family does. Sometimes it involves helping them make peace with the world around them, and sometimes it involves large weapons and a harsh attitude. We speak softly and carry a big stick, which differentiates us from the Covenant (which, I should mention, we left quite a few years back) in that they only know how to carry sticks. Big, little, or pointy.

But tonight I was doing something which my family would regard as frivolous. Especially on Halloween. There were a great many urgent things to be doing on Halloween in my line of work, and I'll give you a hint; pumpkins are not involved.

Tonight I was dancing. Or to be more precise, tonight Valerie Pryor was dancing. (Valerie Pryor is my stage name for this part of my life. A member of the Price family can't have a public ID as a dancer. It would involve too much attention, and we like to be shrinking violets. With military-grade weapons.) This night would be spent with fringe and sequins, rather than with a pair of knives and a rooftop patrol.

I felt a bit guilty. Just not guilty enough to change my mind. I'd be out on the town later, and I even had a nest of basilisks to clear out with my boyfriend. (His name's Dominic. He works for the Covenant. We still manage to have a relationship. Long story.)

I and a number of other local professionals - professional dancers, that is - had been roped in for a charity event by the local firefighters. We were supposed to be providing exhibition dances in between the general melee on the floor. I'd been called up at the last minute, due to a cancellation which had been phoned in as "sprained ankle" but which I rather suspected was "hot date", and hadn't even had the chance to speak with my scheduled partner Tad yet. I knew his name from the internet and the local mailing list, but that was all. But his rep for tango was good and I could work with that.

Or at least I could, if he would actually show up. It was nearly midnight, and while I was all laced up in white satin and ready to go, my nails freshly glittered and my hair skewered in place, there was no sign of my partner. All the other "volunteers" had vanished out the back the moment their dance was over, so there was no chance of borrowing a partner there. This was shaping up to be a really shitty way to disappoint the organisers. I'd even have phoned Dominic if I'd thought there was a chance of him getting here in time. I did a few warm-up steps in annoyance, kicking up the dust in the temporary changing rooms, and glared at my shoes for want of anything better to frown at.

I didn't even hear the door opening. (Something that a Price girl should be very embarrassed about, let me tell you.) I only realised that someone had entered from the breath of cold air across my shoulders. (It was a tango dress. Skin was a necessity.) And when I turned, he was standing there.

He was already in costume, which meant that we might have half a chance of pulling this off without embarrassing ourselves. His hair, probably just as much a wig as my own red mane, fell in long silver and grey waves to below his waist, framing a face that had quite astonishing cheekbones. His black jacket was pseudo-military, with epaulettes and chains at the shoulders. His pants, also black, were just the right degree of tightness, and his boots, besides having precisely the right degree of heel, gleamed dark enough to see your face in.

He took me in taking him in, and his mouth curled just a fraction on the left side, in a satisfied little smirk that somehow made me complicit in the joke. "I'm glad you approve."

"Not bad," I had to admit. "But I was expecting you a bit, you know, earlier."

He shrugged, dropping one shoulder in a shift of those chains. "A traffic accident, I'm afraid. Hardly something that anyone planned for. How would you like me to address you?"

"Valerie will do," I said. He had a nice voice, high for a man but cool and with just a hint of an accent I didn't recognise. I appreciated that he'd bothered to ask. Too many assholes think that dancing as your partner gives them the right to call you whatever they want. "Will Tad do for you?"

He gave me that half-smirk again. "Just for this evening. Now, this is straight tango?"

I nodded, walking a bit closer to him to check my height against his. He had a couple of inches on me, which was a good differential for what we were about to dance. "Not Argentine, not for this crowd, and nothing too fancy. We're the last pair, and everyone's already had a few to drink, so I figured basic but showy, and send them off with a buzz. You okay with that?"

He nodded, and folded his right arm in front of his body, giving me a controlled little half-bow. "Perfectly. Shall we?"

I nodded back, and he held the door for me as I led him towards the floor. My phone gave a buzz as I walked out, but there wasn't the time left to answer it; whoever it was would have to wait till I got back. There were a couple of assistants fretting in the corridor, but they backed off and waved us past as we came out. One of them hissed at me to hurry, but I could hear the music coming through the walls, and we still had a minute left.

What we didn't have was any more chance to talk. It was loud enough now that we'd have had to shout to be heard, and neither of us felt the need. To tell the truth, I was still too busy being grateful that he'd managed to make it here in time, and swearing never to be guilted into something like this again. He was just looking around, leaning back against the wall with his arms folded.

And then the music paused, and I could hear the announcer giving our names. Tad reached out to take my hand, his fingers still cold from the October wind outside, and swept me through the door and onto the dance floor.

The music hit, and we moved with it.

We fell through the stances automatically at first, getting a feel for each other's styles. Like I'd said, it was basic tango. He held, I clung, he pulled, I spun, the works. The music was louder than the cheers of the crowd, and it kept us on the beat. A minute went by, and I began to put a bit more energy into the moves, now that I knew he could take it. He pulled me in, and his hair fell over my bare shoulder as he held me in the clinch before releasing me. He had that little half-smirk again, and his hand slid down my arm to my wrist as he swung me out before the next pull.

His cold, cold hand.

He wasn't sweating. He was dancing to match me, in leather and satin under the burning lights, and his fingers, his face when I had touched it, were just as cold as if he'd been waiting for an hour outside in a draught.

He saw the look in my eyes, and the half-smirk grew. I wondered if I could draw the knife at the small of my back and put it through his eye before he could do anything, and if it would hurt the charity takings.

He pulled me in and we spun together, and walked five tight steps.

"You'd better not be about to try anything," I breathed in his ear as we paused. Ballroom dancers can make themselves heard in a whisper while the music's loud enough to drown out an earthquake. It's a survival skill.

"I'm only here for the last dance," he whispered as we exchanged public glances. His breath was cool against my neck. "That was the request, wasn't it?"

"I thought I knew all the cryptids in Manhattan." I didn't know what species he was, but I was hardly going to admit that here and now.

"Mm." He didn't answer that, but just moved with me. His hands might be cold, but I had to admit that he was a damn good dancer. We were owning the floor. The crowd had fallen silent...

Wait. It wasn't that the crowd had fallen silent. They just weren't quite there any more. The floor was ringed by shadows. When I looked away from my partner for a moment, my face still set in the rictus combination smile and look of desire that tango demands, I could see other figures moving in the darkness, silver-haired and dark-clothed, dancing solos to the music.

My partner spun me in, stroking his fingers up the side of my face. "Aren't you going to finish the dance, Verity?" he murmured.

This was one of those moments when I regretted that we weren't doing waltz. You can fit a machete under a waltz dress and still have room for paired revolvers and a Bowie knife. It's not that I don't believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt: I just like to do it from a position of superior firepower. Highly superior firepower. Especially when they knew that I was a Price girl.

I matched the gesture, leaning in against his chest. There was a heartbeat, but it was way too slow; it was the pulse of someone deep asleep. "I don't think much of your manners in not telling me your name," I whispered back, looking up in my best tango glance of taunting hopeless passion. "A girl does have certain standards."

"And a Price girl even more so." We were moving towards the end of the dance now, alone in the gloom except for the shadows. Ghosts? Illusions? "Trust me, Verity..." Out eyes met again and he gave me that half-smirk as his voice lingered on my name. "You wouldn't want me to take too close an interest."

"Then why come here?" Out and then in and settle into the final pose, me folded against him, his cold cheek against my cheek.

"Because," he breathed into my ear as we stood there, our bodies tight together, "the last dance is mine."

The music stopped. The lights came up. The crowd were there and they were applauding. I held it together long enough to take the appropriate bows and curtsies, but when we walked off the floor, I had his wrist in a firm grip. I towed, he followed.

"Answers," I said, once I'd got him to the dressing room. "No offence taken -"

"And none given?" he murmured. He was half-smiling again.

"- and I appreciate the partnership," I said with determination. "But I'd like to know who you are before this goes any further."

And then my phone rang. Again. It was the ringtone I've set for Dominic. "Don't go away," I warned the guy, holding up my free hand as I picked up the phone.

"Verity?" Dominic's voice was harsh with concern. "Where have you been? I've been trying to get hold of you for the last twenty minutes!"

"Dancing, what else?" I spared a glance at my ex-partner. Still there. "Has something come up?"

He was silent, then spoke more slowly. "You probably know already, then. Sarah was trying to reach you, and she rang me to make sure it got passed on."

"Know what?" I demanded.

"The accident," he said. "Your partner, Tad Denson. They said that he was killed instantly. The people with him were trying to get hold of the people at your end to let you know..."

I spun to look at my ex-partner. One of the pale-haired shadows from the dance floor was settling a black cloak over his shoulders. He adjusted it, then gave me that half-smirk one last time. There was a complicity about it that made it hard to ignore or refuse, and a possessiveness that made me shiver. He gave me the little bow again, and held it for a solid three seconds as I stood there, the phone in my hand, for once with no idea what to say or do.

And then he was gone, and I was alone in the dressing room.

"Verity?" Dominic said urgently. "Verity, are you all right?"

I took a breath. "Can you come dance tonight? Right now, I really need to have the last dance with someone else."

 

\---

(With all due thanks to the Takarazuka Revue, and in particular the Moon Troupe 2005 production.)


End file.
